Would you like to get timely feedback from your students regarding their perception of what is going well and what could be changed or improved while the course is in progress? Whether you are teaching for the very first time, teaching a new course, testing out new teaching and learning strategies, or using CANVAS – Wayne State University’s (WSU) new Learning Management System, for the first time, timely student feedback can help you make small adjustments to the course to better meet the needs of your students.

The Mid-semester Assessment Program (MAP) run by the Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) allows you to receive students’ voluntary and confidential feedback in your traditional, hybrid, or online course. During the Winter 2018 semester, MAPs will be conducted from Monday, February 12th, until Friday, March 9th.

How does the MAP work?

After you fill out the registration form an OTL consultant will reach out to you to review your goals and answer any questions you may have.

The next step is the data collection. Students are asked to answer two questions: “What is going well regarding their learning in the class?” and “What suggestions might the students have to improve their learning in the course or to improve the instructor’s teaching of the course?”

For traditional courses with 70 or fewer students, an OTL consultant will visit the class to collect students’ feedback.

For traditional courses with more than 70 students or those offered online or at satellite campuses, students’ feedback will be collected anonymously through an online survey. An OTL consultant will provide the survey link for you to distribute to the students.

Within a week after the data has been collected, you will have a follow-up meeting with your OTL consultant to review students’ aggregated feedback, discuss key themes, and identify one or two helpful instructional strategies and resources that you can implement in your course.

What do WSU instructors think about the MAP?

“The MAP is a unique opportunity to listen what the students think about the course, but feel uncomfortable to say directly to the professor.” Wayne State Instructor

“Having MAPs to help figure out what was working or not within a semester was very useful when I first began teaching as a primary instructor. It took me a couple of years to learn how to teach, and that feedback was invaluable.” Wayne State Graduate Teaching Assistant

College can be a challenging place for students as they move from novice (high school) to expert (college and beyond) level thinkers. Assignment design can be pivotal for students, especially in foundational courses, as they are introduced to the University setting; with students either grasping the assignment or faltering. This make-or-break structure is particularly relevant to students from marginalized groups.

The Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) project from University of Nevada, Las Vegas provides a framework to design assignments that maximizes student success. By making these small adjustments to the structure of assignments, researchers observed significant increases in students’ academic confidence and sense of belonging – both strong predictors of student success and increased persistence, with greater gains for historically underserved students. These findings have been demonstrated across eight Universities across the country.

Overview of the TILT Framework

The TILT framework makes learning more transparent as students develop confidence and the core competencies necessary for academic success. TILT is research-based and comprised of three component parts employed during assignment design:

Purpose: Help students grasp the assignment by providing an understanding of what they should take away from the assignment. Focus on the knowledge and abilities they should still have five years from now.

Tasks: Provide a clear set of tasks for students to accomplish.

Criteria: Provide a rubric upfront that gives students a clear idea of how you will be evaluating the assignment and/or include annotated examples of successful past work to help students calibrate their approach.

How You Can Participate

All instructors are encouraged to join in! If you are interested in learning more about TILT, please attend the upcoming TILT workshop with the Office for Teaching & Learning on Wednesday, January 31, 2018 at 1:30 PM in room 150 of the Purdy/Kresge Library; or contact otl@wayne.edu to schedule a consultation.

Leave a comment below! What other strategies do you use to make your assignments as clear as possible for students?

What can I do as an instructor to motivate my students to take the course?

You can assign the course to students by providing a link to the course. Furthermore, you can make this a required, graded assignment, by assigning a few points to the course to motivate students to take the course.

Canvas Assignment for Students

The assignment can be foundin the Canvas Commons area. From the Global Navigation Menu, in Canvas, click Commons :

Additionally, consultants in the Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) are available to meet with you in person, by phone, or virtual meeting spaces (e.g., Skype) to discuss strategies for helping students learn Canvas. For more information or to schedule an appointment, call the OTL at 313-577-0001 or email OTL@wayne.edu.

Are you a GTA at WSU and the thought of having to teach makes you panic? Are you overwhelmed when you start putting together your syllabus and have no idea what “learning outcomes” are?

Panic no more – we can help!

The Office of Teaching and Learning (OTL) and the Graduate School are pleased to announce an introductory class on college teaching for graduate students next winter semester:

GS 7900 Introduction to College Teaching and Learning. The one-credit class will be taught in a hybrid format – both in-person and online – and provides an introduction to the principles of college teaching through an examination of proven methods for teaching effectively. The class offers opportunities for the development and improvement of participants’ instructional skills from both a theoretical and a practice-based understanding of excellence in teaching.

Topics include:

Designing your class – from syllabus to final exam:
What learning outcomes should be included when designing a new class? What framework should be applied to design lessons that reflect the course’s learning objectives?

Active learning and assessments:
What evidence-based teaching methods can I use to enhance my students’ learning in my classroom? How do I design exams and other assessments that are effective and align with my learning outcomes?

Technology:
How can I successfully incorporate educational technologies in the classroom? What are some fun tools I can use in class that support student learning?

Career development:
What should be included in my diversity statement, teaching philosophy, and teaching portfolio?

We especially encourage new GTAs who have never taught and PhD’s that are preparing to enter the job market to take this class. Graduate students from all disciplines are welcome!

Are you looking to incorporate some new teaching and learning strategies to help you be at your best as a teacher? Is your goal to engage students and build a strong community of learners regardless of the environment – traditional, hybrid or online – in which you are teaching? The Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) has designed the Teaching Handbook, an online resource meant to help all Wayne State University (WSU) instructors open the conversation about course design, student-centered teaching methods, and assessment.

For example, if your goal is use evidence based teaching methods to engage students, the Student-Centered Classrooms section of the Teaching Handbook will help you get started by providing suggestions for activities for the first day of class and examples of evidence-based teaching methods, such as think-pair-share, one-minute papers, or effective use of clickers. The Leading Discussions sub-section lists some of the benefits of leading discussions in a classroom, provides some strategies for implementing discussion, and includes resources for improving classroom discussions. Additionally, the sub-section Using Groups to Enhance Student Learning provides guidance on how to support students’ learning through groups and a video on how one WSU professor uses groups to enhance learning. Lastly, instructors can save time and help students make the best use of their time by creating clear instructions on the assignments. The Making Assignments Clear sub-section offers concrete strategies for designing clear assignments such as describe the purpose of the assignment, break instruction into steps, provide need-to-know information rather that nice-to-know, and use a rubric. Clear assignments will help students make the best of each assignment, and have an overall better experience in the course.

The Teaching Handbook is a great place to get ideas and find resources, but it is only the beginning. Consultants in the OTL are available to meet with you in person, by phone, or virtual meeting spaces (e.g., Skype or Blackboard Collaborate Ultra) to further discuss student-centered teaching methods and any of the other topics found in the Teaching Handbook. For more information or to schedule an appointment, call the OTL at 313-577-0001 or email OTL@wayne.edu.

Have you visited the Teaching Handbook? What is your favorite student-centered strategy that you found? Use the comments section below to let us know how you have incorporated student-centered strategies in your course.

Dr. Saundra McGuire, the Director Emerita of the Center for Academic Success and retired Assistant Vice Chancellor and Professor of Chemistry at Louisiana State University (LSU) was our featured speaker on Tuesday, March 28th 2017. The campus wide forum on teaching and learning was co-hosted by the Office for Teaching and Learning and the Wayne State University (WSU) National Science Foundation – funded WIDER/ SSTEPS Grant Program. As a part of this forum, Provost Keith Whitfield addressed participants on the importance of meeting students where they are, emphasized that what may have worked 10 years ago may no longer be sufficient and that new strategies are called for in today’s classrooms. Dr. McGuire engaged a diverse audience of over one hundred and fifty Wayne State faculty, senior academic leaders, and academic staff members on the topic of engaging students in their learning. McGuire, author of Teach Students How to Learn, led participants through a series of highly interactive exercises in a workshop that exemplified how the use of simple learning strategies, such as introducing students to the study cycle and Bloom’s taxonomy, can significantly improve students’ academic success.

Dr. Saundra McGuire presenting to WSU faculty and staff

As a follow up to Dr. McGuire’s presentation, we have included several tips and strategies suggested by Dr. McGuire to help students acquire simple, effective learning strategies:

Emphasize that students’ actions, not their intelligence, will determine their success

Establish high expectations and show students how to meet those expectation on the first day of class

Provide early opportunity for success so that students can build confidence in their ability to excel in the course

Assign students real0world tasks to help them develop a senses of belonging to the larger university community

Clearly articulate assignment expectations to students and provide rubrics and examples as possible

To access the presentation used by Dr. McGuire, click here (PDF) or here (PowerPoint).

Faculty and staff engaged in Dr. Saundra McGuire’s presentation

Additionally, consultants in the Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) are available to meet with you in person, by phone, or virtual meeting spaces (e.g., Skype or Blackboard Collaborate) to discuss strategies for helping students how to learn. For more information or to schedule an appointment, call the OTL at 313-577-0001 or email OTL@wayne.edu.

Use the comment section below to let us know what tip and strategies you have found most useful when you anticipate needing to respond to a range of student readiness in a course!

How can you turn the challenge of teaching students with a wide range of academic readiness into an opportunity?

Lecture Course

Connect learning to students’ prior knowledge, experiences, and interests. Helping students to make meaningful connections with what they already know provides a foundation on which to build new knowledge and skills. They are more likely to apply the course content in meaningful ways.

Vary your assessments. If possible, give students choices in how they demonstrate their mastery of the course content where appropriate. Allow students to submit their assignment as a blog post, a journal entry, an experiment, a short video, an article, a poster, to name just a few options. Through this type of assessment students have more flexibility to work on their interests and needs, and then share their findings with the group.

Vary your instructional strategies. Some instructors on campus have found it beneficial to incorporate more active learning strategies to effectively teach students with different academic readiness. For example, project-based learning helps students to deepen their understanding of a topic while working interdependently with peers as a part of a small group.

Consultants in the Office for Teaching and Learning are available to meet with you in person, by phone, or virtual meeting spaces (e.g., Skype or Blackboard Collaborate) to discuss strategies for teaching students with a range of academic readiness. For more information or to schedule an appointment, call the OTL at 313-577-0001 or email OTL@wayne.edu.

Use the comment section below to let us know what strategies you have found most useful when you anticipate needing to respond to a range of student readiness in a course!

As educators, having difficult conversations in the classroom can be a transformative component of teaching and learning that can help students grow. For many students, university life brings experience that can expose them to multiple points of view and peers from many different backgrounds. While a diversity of ideas and people is a central attribute of the Wayne State University experience, instructors may value some tips on how to facilitate “hot moments” in the classroom. These strategies can help instructors approach difficult topics in a manner productive for everyone.

What helps?

Get to know your students and help them get to know each other before taking on a controversial topic. This will also allow you to anticipate potential issues and plan accordingly.

Confront the potential for conflict in a direct way: students know when you are honest.

Link the discussion topics to learning outcome goals related to your course / discipline and make sure this link is transparent to students.

Actively facilitate the discussion by using multiple methods to make sure everyone has a chance to form and express their perspectives (whether they talk, or not). Use brief writing exercises, voluntary dyad discussion partners, etc. Normalize the experience that students may feel strongly and differently about the topic. If you feel comfortable, gentle humor can help re-center a heated discussion, as that will give students a chance to stop and reflect. Strive to remain personally neutral and play devil’s advocate to facilitate multiple points of view.

Ask supporting questions to help students explain their opinion, and encourage students to clarify their point of view.

After class discussion, follow up with students to make sure they got the right take-aways.

Faculty Support:

To hear a podcast from faculty colleagues around the country sharing strategies they use in the classroom to make discussions of difficult topics helpful and productive, click here.

The Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) staff is available to consult with instructors on teaching strategies and learning-related outcomes associated with addressing sensitive and emotionally charged issues when these emerge in the classroom in either anticipated or unplanned ways. We are available in person, by phone, or virtual meeting spaces (e.g., Skype or Blackboard Collaborate). To schedule an individual consultation, click here or call (313) 577-0001.

Our colleagues in the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) at the University of Michigan have prepared a useful resource, Responding to Difficult Moments. Should you decide to invite a discussion, it may help to review these guidelines for difficult topics.

Additionally, Lee Warren, from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, describes a series of concrete strategies instructors can implement to facilitate learning in the midst of emotionally charged topics in Managing Hot Moments in the Classroom.

A team of faculty consisting of Andrew Feig (Chemistry), Peter Hoffmann (Physics), Robert Bruner (Mathematics), Karen Myhr (Biology), and Mathew Ouellett (Associate Provost and Director of the Office for Teaching and Learning) have been awarded a series of NSF grants to study and improve STEM education at Wayne State. The project began with WIDER (Widening Implementation and Dissemination of Evidence-Based Reforms) and is continued with funding from the NSF IUSE (Improving Undergraduate STEM Education) program. This program has funded a five-year project, titled “Student Success Through Evidence-based Pedagogies” (SSTEP). The SSTEP grant is designed to fund a range of competitive, department-based awards of up to $100,000 supporting faculty-driven course reform projects.

In 2016, four teams of faculty were awarded SSTEP funding for their course reform projects. These projects are:

Student-student and student-instructor interaction intensive teaching strategies for two fundamental proof-based mathematics courses. This project is utilizing group work and project-based learning to improve student learning and experience in two upper-level courses in the Department of Mathematics.

Evidence-based course sequence in “Physics for the Life Sciences.” Based in the Physics and Astronomy Department, this project includes a redesign of the curriculum and implementation of Peer Instruction in a sequence of introductory Physics classes for life science majors.

Effective Mathematics INstruction for lEarning aNd Teaching (EMINENT). EMINENT is reforming a sequence of math classes for pre-service K-12 teachers, including the use of group work and journaling. This project is a collaboration between the Wayne State Departments of Mathematics and Mathematics Education and Henry Ford College Mathematics Education.

Student-initiated learning in engineering. This project has incorporated a team-based project in an introductory course in the College of Engineering, demonstrating real-life application of the coding skills learned in this course.

The WIDER Steering Committee is now accepting proposals for faculty-driven course reform projects for 2017. Faculty in STEM departments are invited to submit proposals for course reform projects leading to the implementation of evidence-based practices and learner-centered classroom experiences. Preference will be given to developmental and foundational courses for STEM majors, though upper-division classes impacting degree completion will also be considered.

Two information sessions will be held for faculty to ask questions about their proposals and the review process. Additionally, questions can be directed to the PI, Andrew Feig (afeig@chem.wayne.edu). The information sessions will be held:

December 6, 2016 at 10 AM, Maccabees Building, Conference Room A

January 5, 2017 at 1 PM, Purdy/Kresge Teaching Commons, Room 150

The request for proposals can be found here. Proposals are due February 8, 2017.

As members of the Wayne State University community continue to absorb and grapple with understanding the implications of the presidential election, the Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) has prepared some resource materials for instructors.

As President Wilson recently said, “…whether we agree or disagree with the election outcome, we must come together for the sake of our students, our university and our community.” At the OTL we have been hearing from instructors seeking guidance and resources on how to talk with their students in this post-election time. Of course, such strategies depend on many factors and you may or may not choose to engage your students in conversation about the election results. In either case, we hope the following will prove helpful.

Huston and DiPietro (2007) suggest that instructors’ responses need not be complicated, time-intensive, or personalized for students to perceive them as helpful. They offer the following strategies as useful to consider:

Be yourself. Students appreciate an instructor who responds in a unique and humane way. Faculty should not feel pressured to homogenize their responses or have the perfect answer.

Acknowledge that members of the class may quite possibly have a direct relationship with the current event (and different perspectives on what the election may mean personally, to their families, to their communities, and to the country).

Consider holding a minute of silent reflection at the beginning of class.

Be self-reflective yet neutral. Students unsure of how to relate to events may benefit from seeing a mentor model open-ended reflection and self-control.

Understand that this election might resonate with prior experiences with authorities and social institutions (both in our own life and in our students’ lives).

Cognitive research informs us that working memory capacity is reduced during times of enhanced stress, making students less capable of focusing and learning new material:

Consider supporting anxious students by offering to grant an extension on current assignments for those who request it.

Offer to review course material again in a future class session in case students are preoccupied or distracted.

Consider posting campus resources for students on your course Blackboard site. A simple acknowledgement that this may be a stressful time and that seeking formal and / or informal support in addition to friends and family can be genuinely helpful.

Consider the tools of your discipline as the point of entry. Faculty responses that required high levels of effort were also viewed as helpful, so those who wish to use the lens of their discipline to examine the events and possible future outcomes surrounding this election are encouraged to do so. Such strategies might include journal writing, listening to a story that addresses relevant themes, reading selected poems, and other activities that allow students to address the events (Huston & DiPietro, 2007).

Faculty Support:

The Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) staff is available to consult with instructors on teaching strategies and learning-related outcomes associated with addressing sensitive and emotionally charged issues when these emerge in the classroom in either anticipated or unplanned ways. We are available in person, by phone, or virtual meeting spaces (e.g., Skype or Blackboard Collaborate). To schedule an individual consultation, click here or call (313) 577-0001.

Additionally, Lee Warren, from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University, describes a series of concrete strategies instructors can implement to facilitate learning in the midst of emotionally charged topics in Managing Hot Moments in the Classroom.

Sometimes, more comprehensive social and psychological support is warranted. Additional resources include:

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The opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the individuals posting them and do not necessarily represent the views of Wayne State University, its administration, faculty, staff or students. The University is not responsible for the accuracy of blog content and accepts no liability for such material.